Featured Research

Scientists studying 1,600-year-old cotton from the banks of the Nile have found what they believe is the first evidence that punctuated evolution has occurred in a major crop group within the relatively short history of plant domestication.

Share This

Present-day cotton. Scientists studying 1,600-year-old cotton from the banks of the Nile have found what they believe is the first evidence that punctuated evolution has occurred in a major crop group within the relatively short history of plant domestication.

Scientists studying 1,600-year-old cotton from the banks of the Nile have found what they believe is the first evidence that punctuated evolution has occurred in a major crop group within the relatively short history of plant domestication.

Related Articles

The findings offer an insight into the dynamics of agriculture in the ancient world and could also help today's domestic crops face challenges such as climate change and water scarcity.

The researchers, led by Dr Robin Allaby from the School of Life Sciences at the University of Warwick, examined the remains of ancient cotton at Qasr Ibrim in Egypt's Upper Nile using high throughput sequencing technologies.

This is the first time such technology has been used on ancient plants and also the first time the technique has been applied to archaeological samples in such hot countries.

The site is located about 40 km from Abu Simbel and 70 km from the modern Sudanese border on the east bank of what is now Lake Nasser.

They also studied South American samples from sites in Peru and Brazil aged between 800 and nearly 4,000 years old.

The results showed that even over the relatively short timescale of a millennia and a half, the Egyptian cotton, identified as G. herbaceum, showed evidence of significant genomic reorganisation when the ancient and the modern variety were compared.

However closely-related G.Barbadense from the sites in South America showed genomic stability between the two samples, even though these were separated by more than 2,000 miles in distance and 3,000 years in time.

This divergent picture points towards punctuated evolution -- long periods of evolutionary stability interspersed by bursts of rapid change -- having occurred in the cotton family.

Dr Allaby said: "We think of evolution as a very slow process, but as we analyse more genome information we can see that there's been a huge amount of large-scale proactive change during recent history.

"Our results for the cotton from Egypt indicate that there has been the potential for more adaptive evolution going on in domesticated plant species than was appreciated up until now.

"Plants that are local to their particular area will develop genes which allow them to better tolerate the stresses they find in the environment around them.

"It's possible that cotton at the Qasr Ibrim site has adapted in response to extreme environmental stress, such as not enough water.

"This insight into how domesticated crops evolved when faced with environmental stress is of value for modern agriculture in the face of current challenges like climate change and water scarcity."

For archaeologists, the results also shed light on agricultural development in the ancient world.

There has long been uncertainty as to whether ancient Egyptians had imported domesticated cotton from the Indian subcontinent, as had happened with other crops, or whether they were growing a native African variety which had been domesticated locally.

The study's findings that the Qasr Ibrim seeds were of the G. herbaceum variety, native to Africa, rather than G.arboreum, which is native to the Indian subcontinent, represents the first molecular-based identification of archaeobotanical cotton to a species level.

Dr Allaby said the findings confirm there was an indigenous domestication of cotton in Africa which was separate from the domestication of cotton in India.

"The presence of cotton textiles on Egyptian and Nubian sites has been well documented but there has always been uncertainty among archaeologists as to the origin of these.

"It's not possible to identify some cotton varieties just by looking at them, so we were asked to delve into the DNA.

"We identified the African variety -- G. herbaceum, which suggest that domesticated cotton was not a cultural import -- it was a technology that had grown up independently."

More Fossils & Ruins News

Featured Research

Mar. 2, 2015 — Richard III is the only male to be discovered at infamous former car-park site. A mysterious lead coffin found close to the site of Richard III's hastily dug grave at the Grey Friars friary has now ... full story

Mar. 1, 2015 — A study of how climate change has affected emperor penguins over the last 30,000 years found that only three populations may have survived during the last ice age, and that the Ross Sea in Antarctica ... full story

Feb. 27, 2015 — That swim tracks made by tetrapods occur in high numbers in deposits from the Early Triassic is well known. What is less clear is why the tracks are so abundant and well preserved. Paleontologists ... full story

Feb. 27, 2015 — DNA evidence shows surprise cultural connections between Britain and Europe 8,000 years ago. Researchers found evidence for a variety of wheat at a submerged archaeological site off the south coast ... full story

Feb. 26, 2015 — The miniweight boxing title of the animal world belongs to the mantis shrimp, a cigar-sized crustacean whose front claws can deliver an explosive 60-mile-per-hour blow akin to a bullet leaving the ... full story

Feb. 24, 2015 — Thirteen million years ago, as many as seven different species of crocodiles hunted in the swampy waters of what is now northeastern Peru, new research shows. This hyperdiverse assemblage, revealed ... full story

Feb. 24, 2015 — Tropical turtle fossils discovered in Wyoming reveal that when Earth got warmer, prehistoric turtles headed north. But if today's turtles try the same technique to cope with warming habitats, they ... full story

Feb. 24, 2015 — A French-Kenyan research team has just described a new fossil ancestor of today's hippo family. This discovery bridges a gap in the fossil record separating these animals from their closest ... full story

Feb. 24, 2015 — Climate-driven plague outbreaks in Asia were repeatedly transmitted over several centuries into southern European harbors, an international team of researchers has found. This finding contrasts the ... full story

Feb. 23, 2015 — New work on echinoids -- marine animals like sea urchins and sand dollars -- gives scientists a reason to rethink a classical pattern of evolution. Fossil-based studies have traditionally indicated ... full story

Related Stories

May 5, 2014 — It's been about 10,000 years since our ancestors began farming, but crop domestication has taken much longer than expected -- a delay caused less by genetics and more by culture and history, ... full story

Dec. 5, 2012 — Giant ragweed lives up to its name, towering over crops and choking out surrounding plant species. Just one ragweed plant per square meter has been shown to reduce crop yields 45 to 77 percent. Now ... full story

Sep. 9, 2011 — A new article provides a brief summary of the various species of thrips present in US cotton, their plant host range and injury to cotton, a general description of thrips biology, and management ... full story

Feb. 1, 2011 — To demonstrate tiny cotton-eating caterpillars' destructive power, entomologists planted two cotton varieties -- one genetically modified to provide protection and one not -- in a demonstration ... full story

ScienceDaily features breaking news and videos about the latest discoveries in health, technology, the environment, and more -- from major news services and leading universities, scientific journals, and research organizations.